Alcohol Ink and Alcohol Lift Ink Cards

I love the colour and vibrancy of Alcohol Inks but I have previously felt them to be somewhat limited for using in card making (although still fun). The first ones I made were using very intense colours and I ended up using them as the entire card background and stuck metal charms to them as the embellishments because a stamped image would not have shown up and it seemed a waste to stick something bigger over the top. I used offcuts as partial backgrounds for other images and also cut out butterfly images to use as embellishments.

Then I bought some less intense colours of alcohol ink and made better use of alcohol ink blending solution to give lighter backgrounds that were somewhat easier to use. I also found a fun technique that entailed ‘doodling’ in the ink spaces.

But for me the big breakthrough came with the introduction last year of a new product called Alcohol Lift Ink (see this video for more info – start at 4.30 minutes). It is a clear ink which you use to ink up your (very clean) stamp and then press the stamp onto an alcohol ink-covered surface. The stamp can then be pressed onto ordinary cardstock to create a wonderfully coloured image. If you dab any excess alcohol lift ink off the original inked surface and then gently buff it, a ghosted image appears.

I love this 2 for 1 result and am absolutely amazed at how different the two images are. It is good to experiment with different colour combinations and different stamps to see what works best. Some colour combinations seem to work well for both images while others are better for either the stamped or ghosted image. It was also fun to experiment with different presentations of the images to try to get the best out of both images. Here are some of my efforts so you can see the various results.

 

See also my previous post Alcohol Inks on Acetate Challenge